Newsweek on Nashi, Mestnye Marches

Nashi’s actions during the “Bronze Soldier” fiasco has without a doubt increased its political statue in Russia.As a result Western media is beginning to take more notice. For example, take this week’s edition of Newsweek International where one of their main articles is a feature on Nashi titled “Putin’s Powerful Youth Guard.”

The article paints an ominous picture of Nashi where its members are “highly disciplined and lavishly sponsored” and “a bona fide private army fanatically loyal to one man, the president.” There are passing comparisons to the Komsomol and the Hitler Youth. To their credit, the article’s authors claim that the latter is an “overstatement” because while Nashi may be “fanatically loyal to Putin” they are really only a “sinister parody of democracy movements in Ukraine and elsewhere.”I assume that their “sinister parady of democracy” lies in Nashi’s propensity to through the word “fascist” around without regard. Sadly, it seems to work too well.As Boris Kagarlitsky notes, “the Russian political establishment has made the issue of the fascist threat its best-seller. Politicians and the mass media show far more interest in the notorious fascist threat than in the real fascist organizations operating in the country.”

Newsweek’s characterization of Nashi is for suresteeped in hyperbole. This is to be expected. Most articles about Russia in the Western media tend to place it on a narratological pendulum that somehow always swings a bit too far toward “totalitarianism.” Plus, anytime youth organizations are reduced to mere “disciplined” and “fanatical” puppets of the regime, I can’t help but cast a critical eye. Sure the Kremlin may want “to win—or control—the hearts and minds of Russia‘s youth” but actually doing it is always a more complex and difficult task. If one wants to compare Nashi with the Komsomol, which I have, then one should not also swallow the organization’s own image of themselves. The Potemkin village shouldn’t be taken for the actual village.

Still, Nashi bills itself as the counter revolutionary shock force against the specter of colored revolutions. This, according to Sergei Markov, who helped establish Nashi in 2004, is its original purpose. “The crucial role that young people played in those revolutions made us realize that something should be done. The plan was simple,” he explained to Newsweek. “We launched Nashi in towns close to Moscow so that activists could arrive overnight on Red Square, if needed. The idea was to create an ideology based on a total devotion to the president and his course.”

Creating an ideology is not all.Nashi and other pro-Kremlin youth groups also engage in paramilitary training (this was the case with the Komsomol too).

The paramilitary flavor is unmistakable. Every summer, Nashi runs recruiting camps all across Russia. New members watch propaganda films and receive basic military-style training, says Nashi boss Vasily Yakemenko. They are lectured by top bureaucrats and politicians, including Deputy Defense Minister Yury Baluyevsky and the thuggish Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov—honored as a “Young Politician of the Year” at last year’s Nashi congress. Activists who sign up a hundred new members qualify for promotion to commissar, so long as they pass a grueling three-day series of paramilitary assault courses and physical tests. “We had to demonstrate physical strength, endurance and team leadership,” recalls Leonid Kurza, 23, the leader of the St. Petersburg chapter of Nashi, inducted last winter. Nashi also runs volunteer police troops, who wear black uniforms and, according to the movement’s press service, “help police to patrol streets—and if necessary beat hooligans.”

On Saturday, Moscow oblast got yet another taste of such pledges.In a counter-demonstration to the March of Dissenters in Samara, over a 1000 members of the pro-Kremlin group Mestnyegathered to show their solidarity with the Kremlin. “When the county calls on us, Mestnye leader Alexander Kazakov told the crowd. “We will be in the center of Moscow in an hour and we will not allow a single dissenting bastard assemble here! We will drive them out of the city!”

Somehow police felt that they didn’t need to protect the public from these rabble rousers . . .

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Vasili, Vasili, Vasili. How far you’ve fallen. To think that only a few years ago you were the leader of your own youth army, Nashi. Now, you’re just a bureaucrat. As for Nashi, with the “orange threat” vanquished, their only presence in Russian society is to pull pranks (some of which I admit are funny), hounding “oppositionists,” and filing lawsuits against those who “slander” them. Nashi can apparently dish it, but they can’t take it.

But Vasili, I understand that Nashi has its own problems, and you have yours. This is the Year of Youth, and as head of Russia’s Federal Agency of Youth Affairs, you gotta keep up with the kids. Now that the year is closing, you’ve found your theme song in Timati’s new single, “Love You” (featuring Mariya and Busta Rhymes)

You apparently liked the swoons of the pop trio so much that you issued a letter officially supporting the track and urging the media to jump on board. The letter reads:

The Federal Agency of Youth Affairs gives its full support of the single “Love You.” The track recorded by Timati together with Busta Rhymes and Mariya provides a composition of social nature which brings attention to the problems of the young generation.

The single “Love You” is a good musical codе of behavior for the entire Year of Youth in Russia.

[The Federal Agency of Youth Affairs] considers it an important aspect for mass media to devote attention to similar social work and give assistance in playing the single “Love You.”

Vasili, out!

Well, that letter is either going to bring Timati, Busta, and Mariya a lot of cash or quickly lead “Love You” to quickly becoming the lamest song ever.

A word about the video. The video was shot in downtown Los Angeles, pretty much on the corner of Figueroa and 7th Street. As a LA denizen, it is hard for me to reconcile the sickly sweet theme of compassion, peace, and brotherhood of “Love You” with the fact that Skid Row is a few blocks away. Los Angeles film crews have an uncanny ability (with the help of LAPD) of cleansing an area of undesirables.

But I get why Yakemenko endorsed the song. It’s his special way of telling all of Russia’s youth, “You can call me if you need me. I’ll be right there. I l-l-l-love you.”

Oh, and just remember kiddies, dyadya Putin says, “Drugs are shit,” but breakdancing promotes a “healthy lifestyle” and graffiti is “a real elegant art” (Okay, it really is quite elegant. I’ll give him that. But breakdancing!? Clearly, he hasn’t seen Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. If he did, he would know how much pain watching it causes.)

As for Busta Rhymes, what happened to you, brother?

Hap tip to Carl Schreck.

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As a few of us discovered yesterday, the website for the pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi is blocked for users with non-Russian IP addresses. Entering www.nashi.su into your favorite browser will turn up a “403 Forbidden” error. I’ve had limited success getting around this block using Russian proxy servers. While it happens that some websites and blogs are blocked by some countries (as Nathan Hamm at Registan.net recently discovered), I assume it seems less common that a site will block access to readers outside the host country.

Then again, one wonders if the problem has deeper meaning.According to a report from February a number of Russian nationalist sites have been blocked by the authorities. Hackers have retaliated with targeting pro-Kremlin sites.

The websites might also be out of service because of hackers’ back-to-back attacks on behalf of the nationalist and anti-fascist movements in Russia. Websites of the youth Nashi and Molodaia Gvardiia movements had also been out of service for some time.

At the moment the Molodaia Gvardiia site is accessible and working. This brings me to believe that Nashi has blocked access to their own site. Kinda gives a whole new meaning to “Our own.”

If anyone has any additional information or theories, please pass them along.

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Russian youth’s embrace of Nazism doesn’t just happen in Russia. It’s also happens where one might not initially expect: Israel. Haaretzreports that Israel’s Interior Ministry arrested eight members, all aged 16 to 21, of a Nazi gang in Petah Tikva, a suburb outside of Tel Aviv. The arrests are the result of a year long investigation into street attacks and vandalism of the suburb’s Great Synagogue. The group, who is responsible for attacks on religious Jews, immigrants, homosexuals, homeless, and drug addicts, which they filmed, was found in possession of Nazi literature and posters, five kilos of explosives, a pistol, and an M-16. The M-16 was acquired when one of the youths was drafted into the IDF. He has since fled Israel back to Russia, leaving the rifle with his comrades. The Israelis plan to seek his extradition. Six of the eight have confessed their crimes to police. One of the two holding out is the gang’s leader, Eli Boanitov, who told police, “I won’t ever give up, I was a Nazi and I will stay a Nazi, until we kill them all I will not rest.”

Reports on the story are quick to deny the perpetrators’ “Jewishness.” Haaretz states that all eight youths “have distant ties to Judaism and nonetheless immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union under the Law of Return.” Y-Net states that all but one are “are non-Jewish immigrants” from Russia. The Jerusalem Post also emphasized that the youths were “immigrants” and not bona fide Jews. Such assertions have led Israeli politicans to call for a tightening of the definition of the Law of Return. Some are considering to revoke the youths of their Israeli citizenship. Parliamentarian Effi Eitam, a member of the right wing National Religious Party, said that the Law of Return has allowed Israel to become “a haven for people who hate Israel, hate Jews, and exploit the Law of Return to act on this hatred.” Another deputy, Eli Yishai, the ultra-Orthodox Minister of Trade and Industry told reporters, “We have to rid ourselves of this Satan who lives in the heart of Israel.” This is despite statements from Prime Minister Olmert that the incident shouldn’t be used to “criminalize an entire population nor make generalizations.” Instead, he said, “Israel, as a society, failed in educating the youths discovered to be neo-Nazis.” Other commentators were quick to stress that the incidents were isolated and not indicative of a wider trend.
While this may be true, the uproar such an isolated incident has caused signifies the youths’ apostasy. And the fact that the gang’s leader, Eli Buanitov is in fact a Jew makes his sin all the more significant. Eli Buanitov told police “I won’t have kids. My grandfather is half yid, so that this piece of trash doesn’t have ancestors with even the smallest percent of Jewish blood.” In interview with Israel’s Channel 10, Buanitov’s mother denied that her son was a Nazi and that “he is simply a boy and maybe he didn’t fully understand what [Nazism] is and maybe for him it was like a game.” She also emphasized that her son was indeed Jewish. “He was born in a Jewish family and was raised in a Jewish family. And he knows a lot about the war.” In response to a question about whether her mother was a Holocaust survivor, she replied, “Yes. When he was young he heard a lot of stories about it. And he knows very well how terrible it was. And how many Jews were killed.” As far as his Nazi tattoos, Mrs. Buatinova explained that they read in Yiddish, “God is with us.” In addition to his mother’s statements, Buatinov’s lawyer attempted to boost his client’s patriotic credentials. He stressed that the Buatinov family immigrated eight years ago, his client even has a brother serving in IDF combat units, that Eli attended a yeshiva high school for a twelfth grade, and has been working in a “security office in a very sensitive position” for the last year. What is interesting about this case is not whether the youths indeed committed the crimes or if they sincerly embraced neo-Nazism as an ideology. What is at issue is whether the perpetrators are Jewish or not. The fact almost all of the youths are Russian immigrants with dubious Jewish connections allows many Israelis to rest easy. They can reason: Neo-Nazism is not some homegrown phenomenon but a disease injected into the body politic by the infiltration of some outside Other. But Buatinov’s existence threatens to rock the conceptual foundation of Jewishness itself. The idea of a neo-Nazi Jew is such an anathama that Israel has no law against it. If a Jew can also be a neo-Nazi, and worse become one in Israel, then what does that say about the conceptual coherency of Jewishness itself? The fact that Israeli society could breed its very negation seems to call into question the stability of its justification for existence. Put simply, the gang’s existence posits the question: in a post-Holocaust world, can a Jew be a Nazi?

The question, it seems, is too horrifying to ask, let alone answer. And this is why the gang’s non-Jewishness and antisemitism is being emphasized and not the fact that non-Jewish immigrants were also their victims. After all, Israeli racism against immigrants, especially Asians, Africans, and Russians, is common. The idea that Nazism could be embraced as an expression of that racism toward reveals the fact that two absolute contradictions–Jew and Nazi–are perhaps not so absolutely contradictory after all.

But these questions are likely to be ignored. If reader responses are any indication, targeting Israel’s Russian immigrant population as the breeding ground for wayward youth seems to be the comfortable route. Somehow, however, I doubt explaining racism with racism will do much to alleviate the problem. It will only shroud it further with nationalist fetishisms that will only inflame calls to exact the Russian cancer from Israeli’s otherwise healthy body politic.